The Cougars climbed five spots, to No. 12, in the latest Associated Press football poll released on Sunday.

As Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, the Cougars pulled out a 29-28 victory in front of the largest crowd to witness a game at Robertson Stadium. The Cougars (3-0) open Conference USA play Saturday at UTEP, which fell to 1-3 after a 64-7 beat down from No. 2 Texas.

“As we win, every game gets bigger,” UH coach Kevin Sumlin said. “That's the price of poker. We all know what's at stake.”

Still, don't look for Sumlin to start holding court on the possibility of an unbeaten season or Bowl Championship Series scenarios. Champions from C-USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference, or the Western Athletic Conference can earn an automatic berth into a BCS bowl game by finishing in the top 12 of the BCS standings.

Under the current arrangement, the BCS bowls are required to take only one such team. Two teams from non-BCS leagues are ahead of UH in the AP poll: No. 5 Boise State (4-0) and No. 11 TCU (3-0). The first official BCS standings don't come out until next month.

“We've won three games,” Sumlin said. “We've got a whole long season to go. All we can do is play the people on our schedule. We don't have control over anything after that.”

Playing as a ranked team for the first time since 1991, the Cougars rallied from deficits if 21-10 and 28-20 against Tech. The two teams combined to run 173 offensive plays, throw 105 passes and gain 1,063 yards. The crowd of 32,114 broke the previous Robertson Stadium record of 31,818 set in the 2006 C-USA title game against Southern Miss.

“It was a great victory in light of what was happening in our stadium,” Sumlin said. “For it to be the largest crowd since we moved from the Astrodome, to do it for the alumni, the students who showed up, for the students who lined up on Monday, for the fans who were there when we showed up (Saturday) morning ... It means a lot to win a game in the last few seconds in front of them against an in-state rival.”

Too nervous to watch

UH quarterback Case Keenum, who passed for 435 yards, threw an interception with 7:12 remaining and the Red Raiders leading, 28-23. The Cougars got the ball back again with 5:47 left, and Keenum led a 16-play, 95-yard drive. He scored the winning touchdown on a quarterback draw from the 4-yard line with 49 seconds remaining.

“Honestly, I couldn't watch,” said sophomore defensive tackle David Hunter, who set up the first UH touchdown by stripping Tech quarterback Taylor Potts of the ball and recovering the fumble. “I was praying we would score a touchdown.”

Sophomore linebacker Marcus McGraw, too, relied on the roar of the crowd to let him know what had happened.

“I wasn't watching,” said McGraw, who had a career-high 19 tackles. “I was too nervous.”

AD's phone bombarded

A national television audience saw the Cougars get to 3-0 for the first time since their 2006 C-USA championship season. UH athletic director Mack Rhoades said his phone “has blown up” from all the text messages, e-mails and voice mails since the game.

“Certainly everybody is so excited about the last few games and the national ranking,” Rhoades said. “More than that, it shows that this athletics program can compete at the national level. And yes, it's only three games into the season and we have nine more to play. But it gives you hope for the future that we can continue to build this program and infrastructure behind it to stay at this level and even improve on this level.”

The Cougars re-emergence on the national scene can only help the university's efforts to upgrade its stadium. Rhoades said university officials are trying to decide if the best long-term solution is upgrade Robertson or to build a new stadium altogether.

“Everybody is so excited,” Rhoades said. “Enjoy the moment. Keep it in perspective. And it just needs to make us hungrier. We just need to work even harder now — work even harder if we want to be able to stay at this level for a long period of time.”